How Trump’s Global Gag Rule Undermines Health for the Next Generation
By Stephen Chikwa, International Youth Alliance for Family Planning, Zambia
Trump’s global gag rule leaves youth in the dark by cutting sex education. As a peer educator, I demand that the global gag rule comes to an end.
I am a country coordinator alum with the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning in Livingstone, Zambia. It is my dream to provide inclusive, comprehensive sexual education for all young people in my community because I know that if we as youth educators do not provide this information, no one else will. But this dream is facing some challenges.
Since U.S. President Trump’s Global Gag Rule was implemented in my country, the ecosystem of resources, partners, and funding we rely on to deliver education has fragmented. The global gag rule is a policy that prohibits organizations who receive U.S. global health funding from providing, sharing information, or counseling on abortion, even with their own non-U.S. resources, regardless of a country’s laws on abortion. In Zambia, abortion is legal, yet very few girls and young women know they have the right to have an abortion or know where to seek this care. For many of us, educating about the right and ways to access abortion is critical to our youth programing. With the expanded global gag rule, service providers, civil society organizers and educators like myself are now forced to choose between upholding our country’s abortion law, or losing the only funding that kept us going. For those of us like myself who resisted, we are now cut off from critical implementing partners, projects, and funding options that could have strengthened and sustained our education.
Last year, I experienced first-hand the repercussions of refusing the global gag rule. In July 2019, I was advised by the district education board to meet with two Project leaders, one from USAID and the other one from the U.S. Peace Corps to help implement a youth-friendly sex education program in nearby schools. At the time, the USAID’s Livingstone DREAMS project and the Peace Corps were implementing work similar to us in schools. During the meeting, they declined to work with us, because of our affiliation with the Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia and our pro-choice stance. My organization is pro-choice in access to safe abortion. Implementing our work could not go through without the support of USAID and Peace Corps. I later came across a funding opportunity from PEPFAR, the U.S. global AIDS program that we would otherwise qualify for. But again — Trump’s global gag rule prevented us from doing so.
Comprehensive, age-appropriate, sexuality education has helped young people across the world prevent unintended pregnancy and STI transmission. It has given us the skills to access contraception and other family planning services to gain greater control over our own bodies and our own futures. It has helped us communicate better about our sexuality and boundaries, stand up to violence and discrimination, and understand our rights to better health and freedom to choose. It has even helped us feel more able to pursue our aspirations about jobs, families, and secondary education.
Beyond funding and partnerships, the global gag rule mutes us as peer educators. No longer can we as young advocates and educators freely associate with other organizations and education providers while championing pro-choice principles.
Adolescents and youth are only able to make the right health choices and access services when they are equipped with honest, safe, comprehensive sexuality education that speaks to their needs and sexual and reproductive health options. If our voices and education are silenced, our ability to make informed decisions around our own health and pass down knowledge to next generations is shattered.
Safe, inclusive, youth-friendly sexual education is our hope for a better future. If the U.S. government truly wants to help us raise the quality of life for adolescents and young people in Zambia and across the world, then it must abolish Trump’s global gag rule once and for all by passing the Global H.E.R Act. As citizens of countries whose people are impacted by the global gag rule, we must speak out. We cannot be muted. Only then can we begin prioritizing youth and the wellbeing of future generations.
